New book throws light on people who helped build India’s rst rockets
Building a nation’s space programme from scratch is no mean feat. Once, in the early days of India’s own attempts in this direction, two of its scientists were asked to get ready to leave for Australia in one or two days. The idea was to make the most of an opportunity. The launch site of the European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO) at Woomera was being closed down. The Indian scientists – B. Ramakrishna Rao and R. Aravamudan – were tasked with picking up the site’s telemetry station in an auction!
But when they reached Woomera, they found to their dismay that ELDO had decided to sell o the station as scrap, not really expecting anyone to bid for it. Seeing their disappointment, they were told that a similar station was
The front cover of up for sale elsewhere in Australia. They managed to get it at a bargain price, dismantled it and brought it to Sriharikota!
This and many other such stories and incidents from the infancy of what is now the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) make Indian Rocketinte Shilpikal (The Architects of the Indian Rocket), a 239page book (DC Books) in
Malayalam by former ISRO scientist V.P. Balagangadharan, a fascinating read. The book, in Mr. Balagangadharan’s own words, is conned to those individuals who helped kickstart India’s space programme and building and y the rst small rockets. In it, brief bios of 31 such men, scientists and administrators included, are intertwined with riveting and often delightful incidents from their careers.
Indian Rocketinte Shilpikal has chapters on Vikram Sarabhai, Satish Dhawan, P.D. Bhavsar, A.P.J Abdul Kalam, H.G.S. Moorthy, Brahm Prakash, Vasanth Gowariker, A.E. Muthunayagam and many other ISRO veterans. There is a section dedicated to ‘The Three Foreigners;’ the French astrophysicist Jacques Blamont, NASA’s Arnold Frutkin and the pioneer of Japanese rocketry Hideo Itokawa.